Small Closet Salvation

Wooden hangers are nice, but space gobblers they are for small closets

I have a small closet. This is a good and bad thing. Good because it keeps me disciplined in terms of hauling home and storing tons of junk, which is to say, clothes that do not pass muster when it comes to the three Cs: cut, color and characteristic.

Having a small closet means that you have to go through ruthless closet overhauls every season or so, and bid adieu to those things that no longer fit, are not in great condition or don’t help you communicate your best self to the world.

So in the end you have a nice collection of things you can pull out at any turn and wear, wear, wear. This is a good thing.

The downside of the bad closet is that it’s unforgiving. You have to make choices all the time, and it doesn’t leave you any leeway to store fun stuff, like a florid and heavy collection of flamenco dance outfits, for personal instance.

In a contest, velvet hangers beat wooden ones for space saving

*To ease up more space in your closet, there are many things you can do. One is to replace bulky wooden or, shudder, plastic hangers, with these sleek and skinny velvet ones. I purchased a few packs of velvet hangers (10 for $5.00) at a discount store.

Velvet clothes hangers are very thin—each wood hanger takes up the space of about three—and the material is sticky, in a sense, so clothes adhere to it and there is very little slippage.

I replaced all of my nice-looking but space-gobbling wooden hangers with velvet clothes hangers, and have freed up about 20% more room in my closet. For a small closet, that’s like one acre.

Velvet clothes hangers are rather delicate, so they are ideal for women’s clothes. I don’t think they are sturdy enough to handle men’s jackets and heavier items, so keep your sturdier hangers for those.